The Riverview. I ate there often when I was a single teacher in Pittsburg. It was on a pier on the Sacramento River in Antioch and my favorite meal was pan-fried lobster. I sat at the bar and Champ, the bartender, poured martinis for me and if you stayed until closing time at two in the morning, he brought out the smoked salmon that he had brought back from Alaska. Every summer Champ took a leave from his bartending job and went to Alaska to work on a salmon boat. One night a big U.S.Navy surplus mine sweeper that some rich man had bought slid in next to the pier and moored at the edge of the Riverview. He and his guests spilled out onto the pier, came into the restaurant and ordered drinks and dinner. It was a noisy crowd. As we sat there, the ship began to sink lower against the pier,, and I said to Champ, is the tide going out? When the tide in San Francisco Bay went out, the river level dropped and boats tied to the pier dropped lower.
Not right now, he said. But the ship continued to slip below the pier., and I pointed it out to Champ. He looked puzzled, and Larry, the owner came over. We watched as the shop’s deck came level with the railing of the pier and then noticeably descended. It turned out someone had mistakenly opened a petcock on the ship, and it was now filling with water. There was suddenly a general consternation as the new owner and his now sloshed guests ran to the ship. It settled on the bottom, where it remained for the next week while plans were made to pump the ship out and float it again.
Pan-fried lobster. Once, I varied the menu and tried Oysters Rockefeller, something I had never ordered. A platter came to the table filled with heavy grains of salt, and on top were a dozen open oysters on the half-shell.. Something new to me. They didn’t look as if they had been cooked. I ate them, and discovered they tasted nothing like the canned oysters my mother had used each Thanksgiving to make her oyster dressing. Of course, that recipe was a Midwestern farm recipe, and fresh oysters were several thousand miles away. At the Riverview Lodge.
Russell Hill